Plants are perennial in the native habitat, up to 4 m tall with orange or red flowers (in cultivation only 0.8 to 1.5 meters).

The disc flowers are golden yellow and are generally solitary, long-pedunculated head, with a campanulate to hemispherical involucrum.

The fruit is a turbinado-quadrangular cypsel less than 1 cm long, brown or black, with two unequal deciduous wings.

[3] It occurs in Florida, Louisiana, Mexico, Central America and the West Indies on fields, in woody plants and ruderally at altitudes below 1000 meters on the edges of roads and highways, as well as in other disturbed areas.

It requires poor to average, well-drained soil in an area protected from the wind to prevent its brittle stems from bending or breaking.